Thank you very much. Hi, people. Welcome to our Nordnet Q4 and full year report. We are happy to present another strong quarter, finalizing a really good 2015. Next slide, please. For the quarter, revenue was up by 14%, giving us an operating profit increase by 18%. For the full year, that resulted in a revenue increase by 15% and a profit after tax up by 29%. Actually, giving us, in Nordnet history, the most profitable year ever. Next slide, please. Some highlights from Q4 2015. In Sweden, we launched Nordnet Supermarket, commission-free trading in over 6,000 exchange-traded products. We're really happy with that launch, and we will see more transactions going through and going forward. Nordnet customers carried out 5.7 million transactions, a record for the quarters. Lending exceeded SEK 7 billion, and we are especially happy about that.
The low interest level environment that we are operating in puts pressure on our net interest income. We have excess deposits, and every SEK, DKK, NOK, or EUR that we can lend gives us a better return. We're happy with that development. We are also happy to be able to propose an increased dividend to SEK 1.30. Next slide, please. Growth in active customers increased by 13.4%. We are growing in all markets, Denmark standing out with a growth of over 40%. We are happy with the growth of customers in Norway and Finland, and we can do better in Sweden. We know that. Next slide, please. Net savings, we're growing exponentially also there in Denmark with a growth over 40%. Norway, a growth over 20%. Finland, that has a weak economy and a locked-in market, we grew 2%.
In Sweden, we had a negative growth by minus 2%. You know that depends on the scaled-down partnership with Söderberg & Partners. That was an outflow of SEK 7.5 billion over the year. If we adjust for that, we had a 6% underlying growth in net savings in Sweden. Next slide, please. Q4 was a super active quarter. Normally, Q1 is the quarter with the highest activity in the years, but not this year. Actually, in Q4, we had the highest number of trades in Nordnet's history, as I said. Next slide, please. Here you see the development in our lending products, and we're really happy with that growth. As you can see, it accelerated in the second half of the year. When it comes to our personal loans business, you remember that we had a flattening growth in the beginning of the year.
We put a growth strategy in place, and we have seen growth picking up in the second half. When it comes to margin lending, you might recall that we launched a new margin lending product called Knockoutlånet in Sweden and Superlånet in the other markets. We have seen a volume increase just because of that. Of course, margin lending is also positively affected by the positive trading climate. Going forward, we will continue to focus on lending. Next slide, please. With that, I hand over to you, Jacob.
Thank you, Håkan. Now for a closer look at our financial performance during the final three months of 2015. Total revenues amount to almost SEK 326 million in the quarter. It's up 11% compared to Q3 and 14% compared to the same quarter 2014. Looking at the different components within our revenue, starting at the bottom of the chart, the blue part of the bar is net interest income. Net interest income declined slightly quarter-on-quarter to SEK 100 million. Within the NII, there's three parts. Margin lending, it has developed nicely during the quarter, as Håkan mentioned, and the volumes are over SEK 4.5 billion at the end of the quarter. Also, personal loans show increasing volumes, and after a sluggish start, we have over 10% growth year-on-year. It's a little bit better than the general market in our estimate, good development there.
Partly offsetting the volume increases in both these products is slightly lower rates, both for margin lending and for personal loans. The third part of NII is our liquidity portfolio, where we also see effects of lower market rates and lower yields on bonds in the portfolio. That concludes NII. The next part, the gray part of the bar represents commission income. It's up SEK 17 million compared to the previous quarter. Of course, mainly due to the high activity in the stock market. October, November, December were all quite volatile on all the four Nordic markets. Development that normally drives activity among our customers. Number of trades is up over 40% compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. Commission per trade is slightly lower compared to the previous quarter. This is mainly due to a change in the mix of customers trading.
As you know, we lowered our prices on the Swedish market at the end of Q2, Q3 was a full quarter with a new price list. The immediate effect of the price cut was mostly there already in Q3. Moving on to other income. The top part of the bar, it includes FX income generated when customers trade outside of their home market. It also includes license fees and other administrative fees. However, the main part of the increase from Q3 is related to a new revenue item related to our Danish business. Based on market share of trading in Danish shares during the year, the Danish CSD administers a type of fee sharing, so-called Interbank Aktiegebyr. It totals roughly SEK 10 million in the quarter. While it's booked in Q4, it relates to trading during all of 2015.
It is a recurring fee calculated two times per year, we will receive this fee also going forward, it has not been included previously, that explains the major part of the pickup in Q4 versus the previous quarter and also versus Q4 of last year when we did not have this fee. That's it for revenues. Moving on to expenses on the next slide. Thank you, operator. Expenses, including credit losses, amount to SEK 212 million for the quarter, clearly up from the previous quarter and also from the previous year. For the full year, expenses excluding credit losses increased by 7.6%. This is about SEK 5 million-SEK 6 million higher than our view at the end of the third quarter. On the call, we talked about the year-on-year increase around 6%. The increase since then is due to mainly two things.
One is a deliberate decision to maintain a high pace of development and also some extra marketing spending in the quarter, taking advantage of the positive trading climate in Denmark. A little higher than what we talked about last time we spoke. As we have spoken about during the year, the increase in cost base during 2015 is mainly related to added resources in IT and product development areas, and also the buildup of our corporate pension sales team in Sweden. We have also invested in IT infrastructure and also competence development within the group during the year. For 2016, we expect further to build our resources in the IT and product development area, and we expect a cost increase of 6%-8% for 2016 compared to 2015.
In addition to the decision to continue to invest in the areas we just discussed, our increasing business volume also has some effect on cost. Volumes are increasing in virtually all areas. In the fourth quarter of 2015, we handled roughly 20%-40% more business volume on our platform compared to a year earlier. This increases the need for resources in areas of our operation that still include manual steps. It also affects some volume-based fees and so on. Part of the cost increase is volume-driven, but definitely not all of it. That's it for expenses. Next slide, have a look at operating profits. Operating profit for the fourth quarter amounts to SEK 113 million, increase of SEK 15 million from the previous quarter. That's up 16%. For the full year 2015, operating profit is SEK 449 million.
As Håkan mentioned at the start here, it's the best full year result for Nordnet ever. We won't dwell too much on that, let's instead move on to the next slide and look at the performance per country. This slide illustrates our business across the four markets. All four markets developed very well during 2015. The charts here show that 40%-50% of our business comes from Norway, Denmark, and Finland at the end of the year. Right now, roughly half of Nordnet's customers reside outside of Sweden. Looking at operating profit, the share from Denmark, Norway, and Finland is also increasing. For 2015, the three countries make up 41% compared to 19% during 2014. Håkan pointed this out earlier, Denmark continues to grow with over 40% on our long-term metrics, net savings, and number of customers.
In addition, Danish customers continue to be very active, averaging roughly twice as many trades per customer as the other markets. This leads to a very good operating margin of 49% in Denmark for 2015. Norway also has a very positive development. Going back, I'd say one and a half years, we managed a steady increase in growth rates, both for number of customers and for net savings. This results in an operating profit for 2015, four times improved from the previous year. Nordnet is truly a Nordic operation with a strong position to continue to grow in all markets. We'll go to the next slide for a closer look at the income statement compared to corresponding periods 2014. I'll move fairly quickly through the top two sections as we've covered most of those trends when looking at the quarterly trends.
The revenues for the three-month period, October to December, total just under SEK 326 million, up 14% compared to the same period, 2014. Also full year shows an increase compared to 2014. Revenues are up around 15%. Increase compared to 2014 is within the trading-related revenue items, net commission and other income, while NII is lower compared to the same period last year, SEK 202.7 million. That is operating expenses, and it is up 13% compared to the same quarter 2014. Full-year operating expenses, as mentioned earlier, up by around 7.6% compared to 2014. Mainly due to the increase of resources in IT and product development, as well as corporate pension sales. As mentioned earlier, outlook for next year is 6%-8% compared to 2015. Moving down to credit losses, they are all related to our personal loans business. That is our unsecured consumer lending.
Losses around almost at SEK 10 million for the three-month period, and for the year, SEK 41.3 million. It is lower than 2014, and loss level is under 2% for the full year. Partly this is due to a little bit lower risk level in the portfolio, which also affects the interest rates. As I mentioned earlier, rates are down year-on-year in the personal loans business. Tax rate for the fourth quarter is 22.7%. The quarter does include adjustments related to previous periods, adding on about 1.5% to the tax rate. Over time, the main factor explaining our tax rate is the business mix between our different legal entities in each country. The countries we operate in, the tax rate ranges from the lowest in Finland at 20%-27% in Norway. It is that range.
All that sums up to a profit for the period October to December of SEK 87.5 million, leading to an EPS of SEK 0.50. For the full year, EPS is at SEK 2.05 per share. We look at the statement of financial position on the next slide. Total assets increased since the start of the year to almost SEK 62 billion. It is mainly a consequence of deposits from the public increasing. Also increasing are assets and liabilities where policyholders bear the risk, meaning our customers' assets in our pension and insurance products. Increase in deposits on the liability side has affected financial assets available for sale and financial assets held to maturity. Both those items refer to our liquidity portfolio. Also loans to the public increased, as we talked about earlier, since the start of this year.
Shareholders' equity amounts to SEK 1,874 million. That brings us to the next slide, where we look at our capital requirements. Walk through that from the top, starting with our capital base, made up of shareholders' equity, of course, which includes profit for this year. We deduct our proposed dividend of SEK 1.3 per share, which amounts to SEK 227.5 million. Also deducting adjustment valuation in intangible assets. That brings us to SEK 1,244 million as a capital base. Compared to the end of 2014, it is slightly lower. During the year, our good results have enabled us to buy back our subordinated liabilities, which totaled SEK 175 million at the start of the year, and more or less been able to replace that with retained earnings. Risk exposure amounts are slightly lower compared to one year ago.
Lending has increased during this year, but it's offset by lower risk weight in our bond portfolio. Total exposure amounts to SEK 7,854 million. This gives us a total capital ratio of 15.8%, which is just within the range of 14%-16% that we have communicated as a target for our capital ratio. That was the end of my prepared remarks. I'll hand back to Håkan for a wrap-up, and we'll take questions after that. Håkan, back to you.
Cool. Next slide, please. Going forward, we will continue to execute on our growth strategy. There are three components to that strategy. One is to have super happy customers, and we will drive up customer satisfaction in order to have more customers recommending us to their friends, families, and colleagues. We will continue to increase brand awareness and the liking of the Nordnet brand in all four markets, and we will continue to innovate to get good stuff out to our customers. When we talk about innovation, we have the recent years focused our resources on getting more products out there. We will slightly shift that now and focus more on enhanced user experience. We will continue to market and product develop around lending products, as I said. With that, thank you all for listening, and I guess we'll open up for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for the speakers, please press 01 on your telephone keypad and you enter a queue. Once you are announced, please ask your question. We have the first question from Peter Wallin from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead, your line is now open.
Hi. Thank you. Good morning, guys.
Good morning, Peter.
I would like to ask a question about the operating profit trends in the different markets, maybe starting with Sweden, where revenues are flat year-over-year, operating profit down 17% and still a relatively strong market while you see spectacular profit growth in especially Denmark. Is there some
Sweden. Now just taking the investments which are benefiting the whole of Nordnet, just lowering the visible operating profitability in Sweden.
Maybe I can start, Jacob, please help me out. We have deliberately invested in building up the corporate pension, occupational pension sales team, which hits the cost line. As you understand, occupational pension is a long-term product, we'll take the cost now reap the benefits in the outer years. Also, we changed the price model for stock trading over the year, that has affected the revenue line. That is the explanation for the operating profit being down. Is that right, Jacob?
Yeah, I think so. We haven't changed our allocation model as such. Of course, we allocate some of the keys are related to volumes and other things. The actual amounts can vary little bit, but the actual model has not been significantly changed year-on-year.
Okay, great. Thank you. Just a minor, more technical question on the fee sharing of the Danish custody. If you could give some more color there, is it reasonable to assume that it's around SEK 5 million twice per year? Will that figure be relatively stable, or do you think you could see a positive trend there if your momentum in Danish market stays?
Yes. I guess the fee is related to the market share or the share of trading in the different stocks. It does vary. Providing that we can continue to increase on our market share, it should also be reflected in this fee as I understand it. Based on what we know right now, I think this is probably the level to expect, but the mechanics of it should be that way.
Okay. Thank you.
It's hard to predict the activity in the customer base, right? That is dependent on what happens on the market and actually in the world. We can assume that, or you can assume that we continue the strong growth in new active customers.
Yeah. Okay, good. Thank you. One question on the consumer lending, where you've seen increasing momentum over the year. How much of this is due to you doing a better job, and how much of this would you say is to some extent from competition maybe easing off a bit from having been very aggressive?
No. There is no easing up on the competition, rather the opposite. I think or I do know that it's due to our own efforts. We're growing more than the market, which was not really the case. In the beginning of the year, we grew like the market grow. We put the growth strategy in place, and the growth picked up after summer.
Okay. This slightly lower margin trend due to going for a bit higher quality clients, is that something you'll continue with also going forward?
I think you can expect that.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Peter Kessiakoff from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Hi, guys.
Hi, Peter.
A couple of questions. First one is your cost guidance where you say that you will invest more in the user experience. Can you just elaborate a bit more on what the time plan is there, and if we should expect similar or these costs to also be seen in 2017? You also mentioned that given, of course, the better inflow of savings that you're seeing in some of your markets and the high transaction activity that it's of course driving costs as well. If you can just give a split of how much of the cost increase that is driven by more transaction volumes. If we can start there. Thanks.
Okay. On the first question on enhanced user experience, I believe that you will be able to see signs of a better user experience during second half of this year, 2016.
On the volume, how much volume increases drives the cost increase. I think I'd be hard pressed to put a specific number on it. We're saying 6%-8% next year, and let's say a couple, two, three of those could be more related to increasing volume and the rest would be more our decision to keep the high development pace. Roughly like that. Of course, sometimes it is hard to say exactly what is volume driven and what's our decision. Definitely there's some volumes do put some cost increases in for us.
Okay. Just relating to our follow-up questions on both actually. First on the IT or the enhanced user experience. You said we'll be able to see signs by second half of 2016. The actual development, will that go on for two years, so we'll actually see changes during 2017 as well? Perhaps, I don't know if you dare to give a number, but roughly what costs are involved in doing this? From what I understand, you will also allocate some of your IT spend from other areas to enhancing the user experience.
Actually, the work with enhancing user experience will go on forever. Our strategy is to do small incremental improvements. That will go on forever, not a big bang thing. Again, you will see the first signs in the second half of 2016.
Maybe to the second part of your question, I think we can also say that, if we look back maybe one and a half, two years, at that point, we saw that we needed to do improvements on the site, but we also felt that we had a couple of holes in our product portfolio and chose to address those first. That has led to the products that have come out during the last few years with Shareville, new Super Funds, the Knock-Out and Super Loan, and so forth. If we look ahead the coming year, we're shifting a little bit more to, I think, it's not black and white saying that there will be no new products, but definitely our focus will be more on the user experience and the site being the most tangible thing when we say that.
Okay. Just then the last question on that. When do you think that we'll see the sites having been changed to the next level or the way you want to see it now?
We're deliberately not saying a date.
Okay
It's part of the way we want to change our way of working is to more go for, like Håkan said, incremental changes and really be faster in putting out small changes all the time. We should start seeing things second half of this year, and as soon as we start that, I guess we'll be able to be more specific on the time plan. It's not because we don't want to say a date, it's because we intentionally don't want to set a date because we want to move towards this way of incremental development.
Okay. Just two more questions. First of all, on the savings capital that is flowing out due to the partnership with Söderberg & Partners, when do you expect that to end and what do you think the final outflow will be? I think it's roughly SEK 7 billion so far. The second question is just on trading activity during January, what kind of activity you've seen, and I guess in terms of customer behavior, have they been selling shares and then just keeping cash, or are people actually actively trading, so buying and selling?
Okay.
Yes, the first part.
It's hard to say on the first question because it's really up to Söderberg & Partners and the customers to decide whether they want to move money or not. I think we said originally that Söderberg has roughly SEK 20 billion on the Nordnet platform, and we estimated that up to SEK 10 billion was subject for potential move. During 2015, SEK 7.5 billion has been transferred. The best guess would be another SEK 2.5. Again, it's up to Söderberg & Partners and customers really to decide that. That's our best guesstimate.
On the second part of your question, Peter, was that related to now January, or could you just repeat that part?
Yeah. I guess it's January related and what kind of effects we've seen from the declining equity markets and I guess to some extent, negative impact on sentiment in general.
Yeah. In the short term, volatility drives activity. The drop we've seen now, the first couple of weeks, I think has driven some activity. We know that over time, if you have a downward trend in the market, retail investors lose a little bit of interest. We definitely have, I guess, four or five really good years behind us on the exchange. We're at least getting closer to the end of the cycle in some way. In the short term, it's no dramatic effect. We've seen high activity. We've had inflows in January as well. It varies a little bit between the markets. We'll put out the release on Monday, is this right? Yeah. I'll give you the exact numbers then. Pretty normal development so far.
In mixed terms, do you see people selling equities and then putting them into cash, or are they actually reinvesting it?
Both. No clear trend on that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Rickard Hellman from Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning. Most of my question has actually been asked and answered, maybe if you can give us an update on your view on competition on the market, and especially regarding the development of DEGIRO, if you experience any outflow or if they're taking the market share.
We start with DEGIRO. No, we have not seen any effect on our customer base or our volumes. It's surprisingly calm and quiet in social media or in digital channels. Still, we are very humble when it comes to that, so we are monitoring them very closely. Otherwise, competition hasn't really changed in the market. It's like we're still clear number one in Denmark, clear number one, and strengthening our position in Denmark, and in Norway we are clear number one. Also in Finland, where we have super happy customers, super satisfied customers, and the same situation in Sweden, actually. We're clear number two after Avanza. We're trying harder.
You are comfortable reiterating that you don't need to do any significant changes in your price plan in the near-term future, still it will not be more expensive to trade stocks over internet over the upcoming years. Is that correct?
Well put.
Okay. Thank you. That's it.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you have a question for the speakers, please press 01 on your telephone keypad now.